World Vegetarian Day initiates the month of October as Vegetarian Awareness Month, which ends
with November 1, World
Vegan Day, as the end of that month of celebration. Vegetarian
Awareness Month has been known variously as Reverence for Life month, Month
of Vegetarian Food, and more.

Several additional
days of vegetarian significance are included in Vegetarian Awareness Month:

Hot in the news this week is a new study ( http://bit.ly/1mzD4Q6 ) suggesting that consuming probiotics can
slightly reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
So, now everyone is running out and eating yogurt, hoping for a miracle cure.
There are no pills, procedures, or superfoods that prevent or cure chronic
disease. These pills and procedures are band aids being placed on top of a core
problem that many prefer to cover up and "fix"... Yet, research is
building on the ability to prevent and
now reverse cardiovascular disease, its risk factors, type 2 diabetes, and
more, with a whole food, plant-based diet. Overall diet and lifestyle need to
be the focus of health and medicine today in order to shift away from the
downward spiral of the current healthcare crisis...

*Some of the research:

--->Kaiser Permanente Thrive's Permanente
Journal Review: "Research shows that plant- based diets are
cost-effective, low-risk interventions that may lower body mass index, blood
pressure, HbA1C [blood glucose control over time], and cholesterol levels. They
may also reduce the number of medications needed to treat chronic diseases and
lower ischemic heart disease mortality rates. Physicians should consider
recommending a plant-based diet to all their patients, especially those with
high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or obesity."
http://1.usa.gov/1k20IIi

Every time you sit down in a restaurant, or grill a steak,
scramble an egg, or drink a glass of milk at home, you’re undermining your
health, and contributing to environmental contamination, global warming and
animal torture.

Unless, of course, you choose meat, egg and dairy products that
were not produced on a factory farm. (Or you eat a vegan diet).

Today’s factory farm model is a disaster. And the premise on
which it was founded—cheap food—has proven false.

A system that dumps tons of untreated waste into waterways, that
puts the public at risk of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” that contributes
to poor personal health, that pollutes entire communities (usually poor and
rural), that makes workers sick, that is fueled by unsustainable GMO crops that
can only be grown using increasingly toxic chemicals, and that contributes more
greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere than the entire transportation
industry, is not cheap.

Someone is paying for the environmental cleanup. The healthcare
costs. The government (taxpayer)-subsidized GMO crops. The extreme droughts,
floods, hurricanes and temperatures caused by global warming.

That somebody is you, the consumer.

Fortunately, consumers have the power to bring down the factory
farms. Let’s get started.

In her
groundbreaking new book, Why We Love
Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy explores the invisible system
that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and
eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the
belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals
become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social
mechanisms. Like other "isms" (racism, ageism, etc.), carnism is most
harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs,
and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for
examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldn't eat meat,
Joy's book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more
informed choices as citizens and consumers.

Author Melanie Joy takes
a look at the debate over our diets --
from a psychological and social perspective. She argues that the simple act of
naming someone a vegetarian or vegan without
a specific name for meat-eaters automatically makes eating meat
"normal."

This sidesteps the ultimate truth -- we make the choice to eat
meat. With an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality, we continue to believe
stereotypes about certain animals and ignore their suffering to placate our
decision to eat meat. This book will change the way you think about your food.

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on
which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,
paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to
be reduced from its current levels [398 ppm.] to at most 350 ppm…” - Dr. James
Hansen

Since Dr. James Hansen, a leading climatologist, warned in 2008
that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere to 350
parts-per-million (ppm) in order to preserve life on Earth, little has been
done to get us there.

It’s getting late. If we’re going to preserve a livable Earth,
we the global grassroots, must do more than mitigate global warming.

We must reverse it.

But how?

Hint number one: not by politely asking out-of-control
corporations and politicians to please stop destroying the planet.

Hint number two: not by pinning our hopes for survival and
climate stability on hi-tech, unproven and dangerous, “solutions” such as
genetic engineering, geoengineering, or carbon capture and sequestration for
coal plants.

Hint number three: not by naively believing that soon (or soon
enough) ordinary consumers all over the planet will spontaneously abandon their
cars, air travel, air conditioning, central heating, and fossil fuel-based
diets and lifestyles just in time to prevent atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases from moving past the tipping point of 450 ppm or more of CO2
to the catastrophic point of no return.

We can reverse climate change by sequestering several hundred
billion tons of excess CO2 using the “tools” we already have at hand:
regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use.

And we can make this world-changing transition by mobilizing a
vast green corps of farmers, ranchers, gardeners, consumers, climate activists
and conservationists to begin the monumental task of moving the Carbon Behemoth
safely back underground.

In his debut, Oppenlander derides our animal-based diets and
encourages awareness of food choices as they affect our lives and the planet.

Eating
meat, fish or dairy products, writes the author, depletes the planet’s
resources and is the single most devastating factor that affects global warming
and our environment. Oppenlander explores how our appetite for meat and fish
affects our land, water, air, pollution, biodiversity, sustainability and
personal health, noting that we “collectively raise, feed, water, kill, and eat
over 70 billion animals each year for food.” The author uses the concept of
global depletion to describe the degradation of our resources on earth, in
detriment to our general health. Through well-researched statistics,
Oppenlander claims that it is “what we eat and the choices we make in our
diet, not the car we drive, that affects our supply of water,
land, and air and will affect our success or failure on our planet.” For
example, one person can save more water by not eating a pound of beef than by
not showering for a full year. Oppenlander discusses the effect of raising
livestock on the rain forests, biodiversity, water usage and water pollution,
and he examines the issue of overfishing on the world’s oceans, outlining how
government subsidies and inaccurate information perpetuate these problems. The
author ridicules the locavore movement for its pieties about grass-fed beef,
noting that there isn’t enough land on the planet for this practice to be
sustainable. To reduce global depletion, Oppenlander suggests education,
legislation banning meat consumption and ecotaxes reflecting the true cost of
the food we eat. The book is filled with hefty statistics but has little
narrative thread to carry readers through.

A children's book that will be released next week is stirring up controversy among parents. It's called
"Vegan is Love," and according to the publisher, is a young readers'
introduction "to veganism as a lifestyle of compassion and action."
The details, however, including images of animals behind bars in crowded cages and
graphic passages about animal testing are being called unsuitable for children
–- the book is intended for kids as young as 6-years-old.

Child psychologist Jennifer Hart Steen told
Matt Lauer on the "Today" show this morning that,
"there’s so much fear presented in the book and if you would just give it
to a child as a children's book they don't understand it. So now they're just
going to be afraid."

Nicole German, a registered dietitian wrote on her blog that "Vegan is Love"
might scare impressionable children into becoming vegan and "without
proper guidance, that child could become malnourished."

The author, Ruby Roth, is raising her 7-year-old stepdaughter,
Akira, whose favorite food is kale, to be vegan. Roth told "Today"
that it is not her intention to instill fear. "If it's too scary to talk
about, the reality of where those pieces of meat come from, then it's certainly
too scary to eat," she said. Instead, the book is supposed to encourage
"compassion and action," Roth told ABC.

The book promotes a no meat, no diary diet, but also suggests
that kids should boycott the zoo, the circus and aquariums because
"animals belong to this earth just as we do." Hart Steen worries that
the title, "Vegan is Love" can send a message to kids that, if you
don't follow this lifestyle, you don’t get to feel love or "you're clearly
creating hate or bad feelings."

Dr. David Katz, HuffPost blogger and director of the YalePreventionCenter supports Roth's
efforts and told ABC that childhood might be "the best time to create
awareness and change behavior accordingly."

The illustrations are eye-opening and topics mature, but Katz
says that, "the torture and maltreatment of animals are real." So,
what's worse? "Telling kids about what's going on? Or raising them in a
world where it is going on and keeping them in the dark about it so they become
complicit to it?"

When you become a member of the North American
Vegetarian Society, you’ll receive a subscription to our quarterly magazine, which
will keep you up-to-date on current medical and nutrition studies. Vegetarian
Voice also explores compelling consumer, environmental, animal rights and
lifestyle issues. Plus delicious vegan recipes are always featured . Members
also receive a 10% discount on all merchandise, including those items listed on
our internet site.

Join now and receive 2 free gifts

New members will receive our 40 recipe-card set featuring
favorite recipes from seven popular cookbook authors. This collection (not
available for purchase) includes entrées, salads, soups, side dishes, desserts
and more. Plus you’ll receive Vegetarianism: Answers to the most commonly asked
questions. This handy 16-page booklet provides answers to those difficult
questions and includes recipes. One year membership is $22.